Like many people, I am totally confused by the many date functions in PHP and MySQL. What I need is a to be able to store a date in MySQL and be able to view it on the screen in a human readable format, search on it by month, year, or combination of both using a standard web form, or sort it on months or years.
Example search would be all the records for febuary for the past 5 years.
I have a javascript calendar that inputs the month in the form as 02-12-2011.
What is the best format to use for this. What should the field be in MySQL.
Thanks
Please make use of the DateTime object.
Store the dates in mysql as a DATE format.
When writing the data
$date = new DateTime($_POST['date']);
or
$date = DateTime::createFromFormat('d-m-Y', $_POST['date']);
$query = sprintf("INSERT INTO `data` SET `date` = '%s'", $date->format('Y-m-d'))
When reading the data out create a DateTime object.
$date = new DateTime($row['date']);
Then you can print it in whatever format you want, e.g. You javascript's format:
echo $date->format('d-m-Y');
See
http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.datetime.php
and for date formats:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php
As far as searches go, you can use mysql Date functions on the fields.
For all records in February for the last 5 years.
SELECT * FROM `data` WHERE MONTH(`date`) = 2 AND YEAR(`date`) >= YEAR(NOW()) - 5
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/date-and-time-functions.html
The column type in MySQL should be date.
it's a date, so store it as a DATE column. You can either use UNIX_TIMESTAMP() in your SQL query or strtotime in PHP, to convert this back to a value that can be passed in to the php date() function, to output whatever format date you'd like.
Related
I am using PHP and mysql and using either Date or DateTime to save dates in mysql database. On site I have been displaying dates the way they are saved in database.
But now I want to show dates EVERYWHERE on site using one format:
April 17 2013
or
April 17 2013 12:20:50
I know I can use date and strtotime functions to display dates in above format. However there are a lot of places where I have date displaying code. So I am looking to automate the process where my current code works and displays dates in above format.
Any idea of how mysql trigger or some php magic could be created that converts all dates run through SELECT query automatically without changing my sql or php code since I have a lot of places in my code and it would be overkill to change code at all places?
For Example:
Date Saved in DB: 2013-04-16 12:41:26
SELECT QUERY: SELECT * FROM myTable
PHP: echo $row->dated; displays 2013-04-16 12:41:26
I want that without changing my php code, dates should be shown in above mentioned format globally on whole site.
Any ideas please how it could be achieved ?
You can directly format in via query using DATE_FORMAT()
SELECT DATE_FORMAT(myDate, '%M %d %Y %h:%i') myDate
FROM TableName
SQLFiddle Demo
and echo in your PHP: $row->myDate
MySQL Trigger doesn't project values and It is only fired during CrUD operations.
I would like to suggest you an alternative approach which i love to use.
You should use the epoch time. An epoch time is basicly the number of second that has passed since 1 January 1970
One if the benefits i love is that it is very easy to calculate
differences in time since you are just dealing with number of
seconds and not a complicated format such as sec min hrs
Another benefit is that it is very easy to store since its a
integer so you can store it in a sql db and have your php code understand it without worrying about the format and things like that.
In php, if you use the time() function, it will return the epoch time.
And if you ever want to display it in a user friendly way. you can use the following code:
$epoch = time();
$dt = new DateTime("$epoch"); // convert UNIX timestamp to PHP DateTime
echo $dt->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // output = 2012-08-15 00:00:00
As you can see, the format of the date is very flexible and thus easy to use.
A nice example to find the date 1 week ago:
$epoch = time() - 604800; //604800 seconds = 7 days
$dt = new DateTime("$epoch"); // convert UNIX timestamp to PHP DateTime
echo $dt->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // output = 2012-08-15 00:00:00
I'm building a website with php and i'm using the DATE-type in my MYSQL table to store dates. The problem that i have is that this stores the dates by default in the format YYYY-MM-DD. But i need this format DD-MM-YYYY to appear on my PHP page with the possibility of calculating the amount of days between 2 different dates. How can this be achieved?
That's a display problem. Use mysql's date_format() function to convert to whatever your display requirements are, e.g.
SELECT date_format(datefield, '%d-%m-%Y'), ...
You can use strtotime to convert a string representation of the date to an actual date object in php, then use the date function to spit out the date as any string format you wish. Also, you can be strtotime to perform date calculations. Additional information can be found at this blog post.
$phpDate = strtotime($stringDateFromDb);
date('d-m-y', $dateFromDb);
strtotime('-3 days', strtotime($stringDateFromDb));
Here is an example for a way to do it:
$date_str = '2012-05-20'; //you get it from db
$date_now = strtotime($date_str); //convert it to unix timestamp
$yesterday=$date_now-24*60*60; //make calculations
echo 'yesterday was: '. date('d-m-Y',$yesterday); //date() returns the date in format you need
Further example here: How to calculate the difference between two dates using PHP?
I am working with dates, in both PHP as well as MySQL. EVerytime I use to convert date in unix format. But this time I have taken field in DB as date. But issue is it is taking yyyy-mm-dd format. I want to store it in dd-mm-yyyy format. Is this possible if I set default setting of DB. or each time I have to explode the dd-mm-yyyy format in PHP and convert it in YYYY-MM-DD format. Its my first query.
Second query is I wish to fetch the records from today's date. I mean dates after today's date. Like today then tomorrow then so on.... Is it possible to use order by on date field.
Just use:
$date = date('d-m-Y', strtotime($dateFromDB));
That will convert from MySQL DateTime to the format you have specified.
It is possible to order by date fields, e.g.:
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE date > [yourDate]
ORDER BY date [DESC | ASC]
Your second requirement contradicts with the first one.
If you store your date in dd-mm-yyyy format, you'll be unable to sort your dates.
So - yes, you have to "explode" the dd-mm-yyyy date in PHP or format it any other way. That's not a big deal though. Everyone does it.
If you have a field of type 'datetime' you can use the MySQL-Command: FROM_UNIXTIME(%d) for conversion. 'order by' should be no problem.
Store the date in default format that is yyyy-mm-dd
when you want to display in front end
use the following query to
select otherFields, date_format(dateField,'%d-%m-%Y') from tableName;
For ordering by date
SELECT * FROM tbl
ORDER BY date DESC
I want to insert date in format m-d into database. I used this code
$date1=date("m-d",mktime(0,0,0,$month1 ,$day1,1));
The date is inserted as 0000-00-00 in MySQL, and I don't know why.
I want to do that to compare that date stored in MySQL with current month and day. How can this be done?
mysql date must be of the form Y-m-d . Building a date with m-d form brings an invalid date.
If you want to compare only month or day, you can use mysql MONTH and DAYOFMONTH functions. For example:
$query = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE MONTH(datecol) = {$month1} AND DAYOFMONTH(datecol) = {$day1}"
$date1=date("Y-m-d",mktime(0,0,0,$month1 ,$day1,1));
I have a moodle installation in which there is a column in mdl_user table called firstaccess whose type is bigint(10) and contains date in following format 1266839570.
I am writing a query for accessing users according to date filters. For e.g. i want to check which users firstaccess is greater than '2010-04-12'. How can i convert the date? These two date formats are different. I think firstaccess is unix timestamp. Should i change the '2010-04-12' into unix timestamp or there is a way to convert firstaccess i.e 1266839570 to yyyy-mm-dd format.
Please help me on this.
Thanks
You can create a unix timestamp in php with the mktime() function, then simply put it in your query.
MySQL has a date_format() function, that can format dates however you like, but I'm not sure if it works with bigints. You'd better go with the mktime.
date() and mktime() are functions to concert from unix timestamp and back.
You can convert your dates in either way
I believe you can write your query using a timestamp. Eg.
SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE firstaccess >= TIMESTAMP('2010-04-12')
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/timestamp.html
I don't know what form the date in your form is, but you can easily convert it to a timestamp (if it already isn't one) using mktime. For example:
$mytimestamp=mktime(0,0,0, $month, $day, $year);
Then just add it to your query:
$myQuery= "SELECT whatever FROM sometable WHERE " . $mytimestamp . ">=firstaccess";
Like Paul Peelen, my answer is a MySQL query. I'm going the other way, though, and converting first access into a date.
Using the date information in your problem:
SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE DATE_FORMAT(FROM_UNIXTIME(firstaccess), '%Y-%m-%d') > '2010-04-12';